An Irish man could be deported and separated from his Australian wife and three children as early as tomorrow after his visa appeal was rejected by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.

Dan Hall, 45, has lived in Lake Macquarie, NSW, for 11 years and he and his wife Virginia have three children under seven, one of whom is autistic.

The pair have been married for nine years but Mr Hall’s partner visa was rejected in a paperwork bungle that saw a police check document get lost in the mail, he says.

Mr Hall met his future wife back in 2008 when she was literally the girl next door.

“I had moved home to my parents’ house in Wangi Wangi,” Mrs Hall told Nine.com.au.

“I had come out of a very nasty relationship with another fella and I wasn’t looking for anybody. And I hear this funny accent next door and I thought, ‘Geez, that guy sounds like a leprechaun’,” she said.

“I’m not the average girl, I like motorbikes and cars and he heard me cursing while I was working on my motorbike and he offered to lend a hand.”

Dan and Virginia Hall on their wedding day in the NSW Hunter Valley in 2008. (Photo: Dan Hall) (Supplied)

Mr Hall said he was “lost for words” when he met Virginia.

“She just blew me away and the second time that I met her I told her I was going to marry her,” he said.

“You could say I’m not one for mucking around. She said, ‘You are getting a bit ahead of yourself aren’t you, you cheeky Irish bastard’.”

The next year they were married and Mr Hall, a carpenter by trade who works as a site manager, applied for his permanent partner visa.

But the application hit its first hitch back in 2013, when Mr Hall failed to submit his marriage certificate on time.

After a successful appeal, everything seemed to be back on track, with only one document left to be submitted - a police check.

However, Mr Hall says he was shocked to hear in 2015 that his visa application had been rejected after the police check document inexplicably took five months to arrive at the Department of Immigration offices.

Mr Hall's visa application was rejected because of a police check document which he says got lost in the mail. (Supplied)

“The police check arrived at our house on the 15th June, 2015. We put it in an envelope and we posted it to the Department of Immigration,” he told Nine.com.au.

“That piece of paper did not surface onto my case officer’s desk until November 15th, which is exactly five months later. If it wasn’t for that piece of paperwork I would be a permanent resident. It was the last thing they needed.”

Mr Hall said he was distraught at the thought of having to leave his family and reapply for a partner visa offshore, a process that could take up to 12 months and had no guarantee of being successful.

“I don’t even want to think about leaving them, it’s been making me sick in the stomach for the last couple of weeks,” he said.

“Two nights ago, I thought I was going to have to go to the hospital. I thought I was having a heart attack but it wasn’t, it was just me getting something I have never had before, it was anxiety, a panic attack and I was having palpitations.”

“I’m not eating properly. I haven’t eaten today. And I normally have a huge appetite, I would eat you out of house and home.”

Two of the couple’s children have special needs - their six-year-old son Cu Chulainn has been diagnosed with severe ADHD and four-year-old Ashlinn is autistic.

Looking after Ashlinn involves sticking to a calm and predictable routine, he said.

“It’s all about every morning when she goes to school her seeing me and saying, “Bye Daddy, I’ll see you after school.”

“Everything that I’ve promised to them is going to be shredded. And it’s not their fault.”

The Hall family could soon be separated is Mr Hall is deported. (Photo: Dan Hall) (Supplied)

The Hall family, who live in a modest two-bedroom house with Mrs Hall’s 74-year-old mother, was a tight family unit built on love, he said.

“I wake up every morning and I’ve got two little daughters and there is one under each wing.”

“Every day my poor wife ends up sleeping at the bottom of the bed. Every single day. What’s going to happen to those two little girls when all of a sudden every morning and every night there is no sign of me.

“How do you explain that to a four-year-old and a three-year-old?”

Mr Hall said he was the sole breadwinner in his family, his wife quit her job as a paramedic to look after their children full time, and he was worried about how the family would make ends meet while he was gone.

“She is my soul mate and I’m hers. It’s going to put a massive strain and a massive pressure on her which she doesn’t deserve because she’s a bloody good wife and a bloody good mother,” he said.

Mr Hall said he and his son Cu Chulainn shared a special bond. (Photo: Dan Hall) (Supplied)

Mrs Hall said the threat of her husband’s deportation had put an enormous strain on the whole family.

“It’s not fair. No-one can understand why he is getting sent home just on the basis of a piece of paper being late,” she said.

“If he was a criminal or a murderer fair enough, but when he has got Australian kids that are relying on him for routine and structure and they have disabilities, and I rely on him too, it doesn’t make sense at all.

“My 74-year-old mum is panicking that we are going to lose the house and we will have to sell it.

“I’m trying to think about how I can go back to work, but what kind of hours can I do with the three children”

Mr Hall said it was easy to draw parallels between Mr Dutton’s rhetoric on immigration and the current controversy the US Trump administration is facing over immigrant parent’s being separated from their children.

“Someone sent me a message and they said for Christ’s sake if an idiot like Donald Trump can reverse his decision to separate families of illegal immigrants, what the hell is wrong with Peter Dutton? It absolutely hit the nail on the head,” he said.

“It’s got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with Peter Dutton and who is right and who is wrong and who has got the biggest set of knobs. It’s about three little Australian children and they are entitled to have their parents.”

In a statement provided to Nine.com.au by the Department of Home Affairs, a spokesperson declined to comment on the specifics of the Hall’s case, but said the government took its responsibility to protect the community seriously.

“Everyone who wants to enter and remain in Australia must be of good character and will be assessed against the character requirements,” the statement read.

“The minister only intervenes in a relatively small number of cases which present unique and exceptional circumstances. Ministerial Intervention is not an extension of the visa process.”